MetaQuorum

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0 WITCHCRAFT JAZZ Double Vinyl LP on PRE-ORDER NOW

January 8, 2018
by MetaQuorum
· Posts

The Big Day has arrived!!

Our second album – Witchcraft Jazz – is now available for pre-order!

We believe good music should be heard at its best, so we are pressing a LIMITED EDITION VINYL, DOUBLE LP, and will be releasing on digital and CD in February.

LISTEN and BUY @

https://goo.gl/KdmgC6

So what is Witchcraft Jazz all about?

12 tracks – that’s one minute short of an hour! – in the ground-breaking style we call Meld – a blend of jazz, fusion, rock, funk, electronica, even baroque, this double LP includes spontaneous improvisations, funk jams, and creative compositions finished off with state-of-the-art production techniques, and mastered at the famous SugarHill Studios, Houston, USA.

Format: 2x LP 12” (140g) 33rpm, full colour outer sleeve, black inner sleeve.

We need your support!

Don’t forget, we need 100 pre-orders to make this happen, so spread the word. But be quick, the campaign ends 22 Feb, and we can’t guarantee the album will be repressed.

No turntable? No worries! We’re giving a FREE DIGITAL DOWNLOAD with each LP bought, and you get the original artwork by Dmitry Ermakov.

WITCHCRAFT JAZZ – a breath of fresh air for 2018!

Crimson Dreams 5:13
Jonathan vingston 3:46
Socket Swing 3:22
The Bartender 5:06
Swagger 6:19
Seven Dwarfs Rock 4:25
Witchcraft Jazz 6:11
Limping Mathematician 4:27
Parallax 9:52
Chicken & Egg 3:45
Autumn Groove 4:04
Goldfinch Charm 3:59

Tracks 2,3,7,8,9,10,12 – written & arranged by Dmitry Ermakov.

Tracks 1, 4 – written & arranged by Dmitry Ermakov & Koos van der Veld.

Tracks 4,5,6 written & arranged by Dmitry Ermakov & Victor Mikheyev.

Mixed by Dmitry Ermakov & Koos van der Velde in Low Bishopley Studio, Weardale, UK.

Mastered by Christopher Longwood in SugarHill Studios, Houston, TX, USA.

Tracks 1, 11 © & ℗ Dmitry Ermakov & Koos van der Velde, 2018

Tracks 4,5,6 © Victor Mikheyev & Dmitry Ermakov, 2018 & ℗ Dmitry Ermakov, Victor Mikheyev & Koos van der Velde, 2018

Tracks 2,3,7,8,9,10,12 © Dmitry Ermakov, 2018 & ℗ Dmitry Ermakov & Koos van der Velde, 2018.

Artwork and design © Dmitry Ermakov.

Album CAT. № MQN013

Album UPC: 5056052738496

0 HAPPY NEW YEAR 2018!

January 4, 2018
by MetaQuorum
· Posts

Happy New Year, everyone!

2017 has been a full-on, productive year for us all here at MQ, and the New Year is alreay looking good!

Exciting news for 2018: we’re releasing the new album – Witchcraft Jazz – on vinyl! A limited edition, double LP with funky artwork courtesy of Dmitry will soon be available for pre-order. It’s a limited edition, copies are numbered, so watch this page for the pre-order link as the campaign will only run for 49 days. No turntable? No problem – we’re giving a free digital download with each record bought, and we’ll be making a few CDs, too.

Here’s a sneak preview: Dmitry listening to the final DMM master of a track from Side 1: The Bartender.

Have a great New Year!

Dmitry, Carol, Koos and Victor

0 SPRING EQUATIONS

April 17, 2017
by MetaQuorum
· Posts

MetaQuorum’s new album, WITCHCRAFT JAZZ, is filling up! We now have 7 tracks mixed and mastered, with another three or four in the pipeline.

Crimson Dreams

Track 6, Crimson Dreams, came together pretty quickly, despite Koos and Dmitry getting into the nitty gritty of polyrhythmic sequences.
And it’s one of Carol’s personal favourites.

Mathematics and Music

Track 7 is The Limping Mathematician – forget about polyrhythmic sequences: ‘It’s based on the Lydian Chromatic Concept of Tonal Organization, by George Russell, but this one’s gone crazy!” as Dmitry puts it. So much so that we even had to call in an Advanced Maths student to whip up an equation for calculating volume distribution through multi-track instrument groups. Here it is!!

Cheers, Suzanne Lees!

And back to the music – Koos recorded what he describes as a ‘monster drum break’ using his new NI Studio Drummer plug-in.

Victor Mikheyev sent us a spacey bass-line recorded in his apartment by the Black Sea in Varna, Bulgaria.

Dmitry used his new Komplete Kontrol S61 keyboard and soft to record a rhythm clavinet for the track.

The new Native Instruments Komplete Kontrol S61 is a truly versatile combination of a top-notch keyboard midi-controller and an amazing collection of software instruments, both synths and sampled. While checking the soundbanks and tweaking the various parameters of the instrument, Dmitry spontaneously played this short piece. Fortunately, Carol was nearby and filmed it or it would have been lost because Cubase wasn’t on 😉

Making Waves in Kathmandu

If you happen to be in Nepal, be sure to drop by the New Orleans Caffe in Thamel. It plays a very cool selection of jazz, blues, funk and prog and its playlist now includes the full MetaQuorum collection.

Carol, vocalist on Migration, enjoying a banana lassi while listening to MetaQuorum’s Cream of the Summer EP in The New Orleans Jazz Caffe, Kathmandu.

Graças

And last but not least, a big THANK YOU to all our fans in Brazil for listening in on SoundCloud! Cheers, guys!!

Wishing you all a fun-filled Spring,
MetaQuorum

0 Happy New Year! New music is on!

January 12, 2017
by MetaQuorum
· Posts

Happy New Year from all of us @ MetaQuorum to all our friends! May 2017 be full of joy and great music!

Here is a short mellow improvisation to great you in the New Year:

We started the New Year by working on new tracks for our next album Witchcraft Jazz due later in the year. So far we have recorded, produced, mixed and mastered five tracks. Several more are at various stages of work. Among them Seven Dwarfs Rock and Crimson Dreams. Here are a couple of short videos shot by Carol during the recording/production stages. First one was shot as we were recording vocals:

As you can see, we had loads of fun :))

And the one below is a super-short documentary about composing and recording Crimson Dreams:

Well that’s it for the time being. Just wanted to keep in touch with you, guys, and show you some snippets of our behind the scenes creative process.

Cheers!

MQ Team

0 BBC airtime – Great start to December!

December 5, 2016
by MetaQuorum
· Posts

Great start to December!
Our new single CHICKEN & EGG was played on BBC Introducing last night.
If – like us – you missed it, you catch it here:
http://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/p04ftbdb
BBC Introducing Newcastle upon Tyne Metro Radio Arena Radio Tyneside Nick Roberts BBC Newcastle

2 HALLOWEEN FUNK

November 2, 2016
by MetaQuorum
· Posts

MetaQuorum had a Live Jam on Samhain eve. Here is a funky snippet – enjoy!

0 MUSIC, ART & PHILOSOPHY

October 28, 2016
by MetaQuorum
· Posts

We are delighted to announce the release of our new single – CHICKEN AND EGG. It’s a great collaboration of art, music and philosophy.

Philosophy

This track is the musical expression of an ongoing question we each face every day when we try to understand the causes and effects behind what’s going on in our lives and in the universe as a whole: what comes first and what follows? The universal timeless dilemma of the chicken and egg.

Art

The cover art was drawn by our dear friend Alexander Voitsekhovsky and by happy coincidence, his exhibition in London coincides with our release. Like Dmitry’s music, Alexander’s art is ‘full of humour and mischief; it intrigues the soul.’ Or as one critic put it: “you can’t stop wondering how these small, childly naive pictures can shine with so much artistic and human sincerity and light.”

Here is a link to a review of Alexander’s art @ Randomstein https://goo.gl/teM0ju

If you are in London, you can visit his exhibition @
6 Pall Mall East, SW1Y 5BF (corner of Whitcomb street and Pall Mall East, entrance in Whitcomb street via black double doors) 27 Oct. – 6 Nov. 2016.

chicken-egg-event_banner-for-petrovich_eng

chicken-egg-event_banner-for-petrovich_%d1%80%d1%83%d1%81

selfie-w-petrovich_dunstanborough_25-516 — Dmitry and Alexander by the sea near Dunstanborough Castle, Northumberland, UK.

Music

The rhythmic track is a meld of various styles: jazz-rock, funk, prog & electronica, great polyrhythmic drum breaks from Koos; and a fusion of mixing techniques. The result? The unmistakable sound of Meld music, pioneered by MetaQuorum.

For the story behind the track and some improvisation on theme, watch the short video below – it was our first attempt at a live Facebook video, so apologies for all the glitches, poor lighting etc.

Listen and Enjoy

You can listen, download, buy the track on Bandcamp or following any of the links in the Liner Notes below:

CHICKEN & EGG

A new single from the forthcoming album Witchcraft Jazz by MetaQuorum

Release Date: 27/10/2016

Dmitry Ermakov scribbled the sketch for this track as fragments of a score many years ago in a very different time and place: St. Petersburg, in a crumbling Soviet Union. The fragments rose from the ashes in 2016 while MetaQuorum were recording their second album, Witchcraft Jazz, in MQ’s recording studio in Weardale, North Pennines.

Genres (iTunes): Main Genre: Rock: Prog-Rock; Alternate Genre: Jazz: Fusion
Genres (MQ definition): Meld: Funk/Prog-Rock/Jazz/Electronica/Hip-Hop – Fusion

Time: 3:45
Written and arranged by Dmitry Ermakov.
Keyboards, synth and key bass – Dmitry Ermakov.
Drums, audio-engineering – Koos van der Velde.
Recorded, produced and mixed by Dmitry Ermakov & Koos van der Velde @ Low Bishopley Studio & Market Place Studio, Weardale, UK.
Mastered by Chris Longwood @ SugarHill Recording Studios, Houston, TX, USA.
Cover art by Alexander Voitsekhovsky.
Cover design by Dmitry Ermakov.
© Dmitry Ermakov, 2016.
℗ Dmitry Ermakov & Koos van der Velde, 2016.
UPC: 5056052738489
ISRC: UK-682-16-24116
CAT N.: MQN011

STREAM:
Spotify: https://goo.gl/pjFvTu
Tidal: https://listen.tidal.com/album/65157460
YouTube: https://goo.gl/jMeVuR
Napster: https://goo.gl/ooKwxn
Deezer: http://www.deezer.com/album/14093368

DOWNLOAD:
iTunes: https://goo.gl/sWw6Vw
GooglePlay: https://goo.gl/z0XQtE
Bandcamp: https://goo.gl/ZrIiBH
Amazon: https://goo.gl/JsWNsI
Digital Tunes: https://goo.gl/Q6eMSM
Juke: https://goo.gl/QwRfIW
Junodownload: https://goo.gl/bhRX4O
Medianet: https://goo.gl/Gpp81K
Qobuz: https://goo.gl/Gpp81K

Till next time 😉

MetaQuorum Team

0 NEWSFLASH: The Piper & The Frog on Radio X – Basel tonight

October 28, 2016
by MetaQuorum
· Posts

Just got call from Markus Bluesharp from Switzerland who played a fantastic harp solo on MetaQuorum’s single The Piper & The Frog. Markus reports Radio X Basel @ https://www.radiox.ch/ will have a short presentation of this single around 18:30 Swiss time. So you can tune in following the link below. Press ‘Livestream’ and off you go!

2 Loads of Good News ;)

October 15, 2016
by MetaQuorum
· Posts

Hi folks

Lots of good news, where shall we start?

Well, Koos and Dmitry have managed to snatch time in their busy schedules to finish mixing two tracks for the new album: Socket Swing, and Swagger. We’ve just got the masters back from Chris Longwood of SugarHill Recording Studios – he’s worked his magic – great results!

So that means we’re one step nearer to our NEW ALBUM – WITCHCRAFT JAZZ. It’s going to be another great album, and we’re especially pleased that Victor Mikheyev is joining us again on bass, for three tracks.

mikheich-dima_bulgaria_byala_2013_web — Victor and Dmitry working on tracks in Bulgaria, Byala, 2013.

And last but not least, to give you a taster of the album, new single CHICKEN & EGG will be released on October 27.

This video footage is from the first Low Bishopley Sessions, February 2015, when Dmitry and Koos were selecting tracks for recording and production. Here, Dmitry improvises around the main theme from Chicken & Egg and discusses how it could be developed. Actually, it took quite a different turn in the end…

Above is some early archive VIDEO material for CHICKEN & EGG, new single from MetaQuorum’s forthcoming album WITCHCRAFT JAZZ.

Cover art by Dmitry’s old and dear friend Petrovich, known in the West as Alexander Voitsekhovsky.

You can join us for an on-line event @ https://www.facebook.com/events/336231016728740/

Cheers, folks! Have a great weekend everyone!

MetaQuorum Team